


Crimson

by handsomejohn



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Blood, Character Death, Depression, Gen, Kidnapping, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 12:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5290679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handsomejohn/pseuds/handsomejohn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's always been a question as to how a serial killer becomes what they are. The notorious Handsome Jack is no exception, as his past is full of loss and pain that sent him tumbling down a path towards a new life and new name.</p>
<p>A companion piece and prequel to Kill of the Night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crimson

Gray. Everything he saw for months after it all happened was the color gray. Ever since he lost his wife to a freak accident, he felt cracked; like a broken piece of a whole. 

It was supposed to be a simple test of new energy technology. All it was supposed to be was the addition of a small eridium catalyst to the combustion process to amplify the results and save a lot of people a lot of money. Everything was going well and it looked like they were successful until it all went to ruin. Something malfunctioned and the eridium reacted poorly with the energy source to create a completely new, unknown reaction. The chain of events that followed was unlike anything ever witnessed before. One moment Jack, John at the time, was looking at his wife, returning her panicked expression, and the next she was gone in a flash of purple and bright light. He yelled and yelled for hours after it happened. He tried to demand that the engineers tell him what happened, what happened to his wife, to undo what happened. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be done. She was gone. There was no way to get her back. John’s demanding yells turned to screams of anguish at his loss and the realization that there was no going back.  
He went through a list of people to blame for it all; the technology operators, the engineers that designed the technology, the technology itself, himself. The final option was the one he settles on for a long while after the accident. He couldn’t save her. He couldn’t be the hero that he promised to be on their wedding day. There was a hole ripped into his heart that he couldn’t fix. 

Coming to this realization, John would just sit and stare at her picture. He couldn’t bring himself to accept that she was gone. He didn’t want to accept at first that he failed her. John let his hair fall out of place, let his facial hair grow out to a fair amount of scruff; he just couldn’t bring himself to care. It all hurt too much. 

As he came to accept that his wife was gone, John’s thoughts slowly sunk into darkness. He imagined doing awful things to himself for letting her go. He had to pay for it somehow, but anything he thought of made him sick to his stomache. He couldn’t bring himself to that level. It was selfish. He still had someone to provide for. 

He needed a distraction from the pain. Luckily for Jack, as a programmer for Hyperion it was easy to lose himself in his work. He buried himself in his work; refusing to eat or even come home some days. He justified it to himself in saying that all of his hard work was providing for his darling Angel. In all of his distraction, however, Jack did not realize that he was leaving someone else behind. It was a cruel joke to think that the person who stopped him from going over the edge was the one being left in his ruin. He may have been working hard to ‘provide’ for her, but was making the mistake to break his second promise to be a hero to his daughter, Angel. 

When John lost his wife, Angel lost both of her parents. Her father’s growing complacency left much to be desired. She didn’t completely understand what happened, but she did know of the cold her mother and father’s absence left in her. She longed for the friendly touch of a parental figure or even something remotely like it. That’s why when a stranger came promising a nice day out, she complied and disappeared.   
That day at work, John stared and stared at the code standing before him on the screen. No matter what he tried, he just couldn’t bring himself to think clearly about what he was to work on. He felt like he should be home, but he didn’t know why. He couldn’t quite figure it out until he looked at their family photo again. Looking upon the picture of the happy family he once belonged to, John’s gaze rested upon the face of his daughter. It was then that he realized that he had to go home to her. No matter what Tassiter or Blake said, he had to get to her. John didn’t even care if he got fired for leaving in the middle of the day. His little girl needed him and he was going to get to her.

Rising from his desk, John didn’t even bother to log out of the workstation. There was no more time to waste while he had to go care for the daughter he neglected while he was buried in grief. Luckily the only boss to see him leave was Mister Blake. Understanding the situation the programmer was going through, the slender man decided to say nothing as John walked right past him. He decided to simply tell Tassiter to ease off when the CEO found that his work wasn’t done from the day. It was obvious to those around him that John wasn’t himself lately; most of his coding work was off with errors that could be easily fixed. This was a shame seeing as the man was usually one of Hyperion’s top programmers, even going out of his way at times to show others where they went wrong. Ever since the accident it seemed as if he lost his spark. Those who knew him well would say that he became a cracked imitation of himself. To see the programmer walking again with such conviction instantly made the Vice President believe that wherever John was going was worthwhile.

“Angel!” John called out as he walked through the front door to their large family house. Inherited from his parents, the house reflected a family history of wealth. There was little material goods to be desired in such a home, but the large amount of space contained often felt empty and hollow. 

Hearing his voice reverberate back to him from the high ceiling of the entrance way, John walked further into the house. “Angel?? Sweetheart? Where are you?” He called out again to his daughter, but received no answer. 

Figuring that she must have taken a nap after getting home from school, John scaled the first set of stairs and walked back through to her room. Putting on a smile, he opens the door after knocking in hopes to find her curled up in bed. To his dismay, he found nothing of the sort. All of her toys in place and the bed still made, it looked as if she wasn’t there all day. The smile instantly fading to a panicked grimace, John could feel his heartrate spike as he came to the realization that he did not know where his daughter was.

“ANGEL???” John called out frantically as he searched the large home for any sign of the young girl. “Angel, darling, this isn’t funny!” He called out desperately as he overturned everything on the top floor looking for her. Moving to the middle floor, John pulled everything out of the cabinets in the kitchen. He pleaded with all physical reason that she had somehow hid in one of the cabinets and fallen asleep. He wanted so badly to find her curled up somewhere fast asleep. He wouldn’t even be angry if she had scampered off with a tub of ice cream. He just wanted to find his baby girl safe and sound. 

Not finding any trace of her in the living room or kitchen, John turned his attention to the basement. Slamming the door open, the programmer leapt down the stairs and once at the bottom, called out for his daughter again. “Angel??? Angel, please come out! Daddy really needs to see you!” Feeling desperation setting in at receiving only the reverberation of his voice back in response, John’s voice cracks as he calls out again, “Sweetheart, please! I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you before! I realize how wrong it was to leave you alone! I want to make it better! Please….!” 

Discovering that she wasn’t anywhere in the house, John took to the neighborhood to look for Angel. He went from house to house, asking anyone he could find if they had seen her. As he continued to receive unsure and negative answers, John began to become more and more panicked and frustrated. Eventually he had to return home as his body was exhausted and the possibility that Angel could wander back into their home lingered at the back of his mind. 

He did not dare give up his search though. Every day he would go out and search for his daughter to no avail. It was hard on the man and each day that passed would wear more and more on his mental state. Soon he stopped contacting people all together, allowing himself to fade into a searching machine that would only stop for food and a few hours of sleep at a time.

After a few weeks of searching, the house on the outskirts of town that was usually vacant, due to the occupant’s work schedule, was occupied for the evening. Alone at the top of a hill, it was home to a rather portly man who fancied himself a potential candidate for local office. Seeing John in his disheveled state show up at his door was the last thing this prideful man wanted. A sneer on his lips, he listened to John’s plea and responded venomously. “You should have been looking after her then. By the looks of you I wouldn’t be surprised if she ran away. I can only imagine the conditions you people had her living in.”

A look of shock passing over John’s face a moment, he sputters out, clearly surprised by the man’s cruel response. “Excuse me? What did you just say…?”

Without missing a beat, the man responds. This scruffy looking man wouldn’t do anything to him. That kind of thing never happened nowadays. “You heard me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ran away to go live with the other street rats. Maybe you were even stupid enough to let her get taken-”

Before the portly man could get another word out, John was throwing a punch at his mouth… And it felt good. Seeing the shock that passed over the other’s face, the programmer felt a small spark inside of him. He felt in control in this moment of chaos. He felt alive and powerful. Wait. He might be onto something here.

Not allowing the other man any more time to react, the younger man was on him. He punched and punched at the portly man as he let out every pent up ounce of frustration and woe. Months of pain were being poured out and transferred in this moment of absolute violence. Moving with the other man down to the floor, he kept laying into him. Not stopping when he felt a warm splash of blood on his face and knuckles, the programmer yelled as each punch made contact with broken cartilage and bone.

Finally coming to when he noticed that the other man had stopped moving, he realized what he had done. The path he had now set himself down was dangerous, but came with what he perceived to be absolute power. He had the power to take someone else’s life. It was refreshing. It was necessary. With it he would start something new and use it to find his daughter or seek revenge upon who took her from him.   
This power would not be enough, however. For his newfound power to really take effect he would have to amplify it through a higher position. The position in mind also provided him an endless supply of weapons; perfect for his new self. 

He also needed a new name for this new job; John was simply not intimidating enough. No, his name would need to have a bite to it. Jack. Now that was a name that could hold fear. It literally ended with a satisfying bite of a syllable. 

He had plenty of time to think about this as he disposed of the body in the back garden. ‘Plenty of bullshit to fertilize the flowers,’ Jack thought to himself as he replaced the last of the soil. Looking down at his hands, he noticed that upon the dirt the blood of the portly man remained. He would have to wash it off later, but for now he would wear the color proudly. Walking home in the middle of the night, John died and was reborn as Jack from a world of gray to one of a new color: crimson.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading about how John fell into his new 'career' and identity of Jack. (Bonus points if you know who Jack's first kill was) I plan to write more about how he rises to power and fully becomes Handsome Jack, but that will have to be balanced around life unfortunately.
> 
> Constructive criticism is more than welcome!


End file.
